Deception in prison assessment of substance abuse

The relationship of The Paulhus Deception Scales (PDS; Paulhus, 1998) to the Texas Christian University Drug Screen I (Simpson & Knight, 1998) was investigated in participants screened for a voluntary in-prison substance abuse treatment program. Mean PDS scores for 35 female and 277 male prison inmates were significantly higher than the inmate norms in the test manual. All three PDS scale scores were negatively related to symptom endorsement and to the diagnosis of drug dependence. Almost 37% of participants produced protocols of questionable validity, with 22% faking-good and 14.7% faking-bad. However, over 90% of participants obtained scores that were not covered by the manual's profile typology. These findings underline the importance of deception to correctional assessment and the need for more information on the psychometrics and operating characteristics of the PDS in correctional settings. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.